Thursday, March 17, 2016

BESSO PALACE

It belonged
to the Rustici and Olgiati families for whom it was renovated by Carlo Maderno (1556/1629)

In
mid-1600s it passed to the Strozzi family from whom it was expropriated in 1882
by the Italian government to build Corso Vittorio Emanuele II

It was
radically changed but the PORTAL at nº 26 built by Carlo
Maderno in 1620 was kept

Since 1905
it belonged to the economist Marco Besso who housed in it an important cultural
center and seat of the Foundations Ernesta and Marco Besso with a
library of about 75,000 volumes about Dante Alighieri, Rome and studies about
Italian proverbs

After some
restoration in the gallery facing the church of SS. Stimmate di S.
Francesco (SS. Stigmata of St.
Francis) a frieze was discovered recently with “Eight virtues” and “Villages
with hermits” 1606 by Tarquinio Ligustri (about
1563/1621) from Viterbo

“The
exaltation of the life of a hermit, defined here as a peaceful relationship
between the man of faith and a hospitable nature, is linked to S. Lucia
Filippini's religiosity, to which the landlord had been particularly close. The
demonstrated attribution to Ligustri of these landscapes will to do some
clarity in the complex panorama of landscape painting in Rome at the beginning
of the seventeenth century, often generically considered pertaining the school
Brill” (Maria Barbara Guerrieri Borsoi - Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani
Treccani)